During a recent visit to the lake, as the dog and I were strolling through the forest next door, I decided to play with the aperture settings on my camera. After settling on looking up a poplar tree for my experiment, I rested the camera body on the tree and aimed my 50mm macro lens up towards the sky.

First, I wanted a very narrow depth of field, so I set my f-stop quite low. This meant the aperture was wide open, letting lots of light in:

1/400 sec at f/3.5, ISO 400, Sony a55 w/50 mm macro lens

Then, to see how the same photo would look like with a wider depth of field, I opted for a larger f-stop. This meant the aperture was narrower, not letting in as much light. I was having trouble focusing on the same spot as the last photo, so while it’s not a perfect compassion, it still works.

1/100 sec a f/11, ISO 400, Sony a55 w/50 mm macro lens

You can tell the difference in light by the shutter speed difference between the two shots. I don’t know about you, but I kind of like the abstract nature of the first shot.

Hey, remember these guys ? Well, guess what they did? They had a little brood of 5 babies (right in the hitch of the 5th wheel!). It was a challenging to take pictures, there wasn’t much room to maneuver the lens and no way to set up the tripod. The pictures aren’t as crisp as I would like, but anyways, here they are!

One thing about working downtown, right by the Legislature and the river valley, I have a lot of subject options 🙂 The other day day, part of my lunchtime photography stroll took me to the High Level Bridge. I decided to play around with shutter speed using full manual mode; usually I play around with aperture in the aperture priority mode. Although I was in the shade, it was a sunny day and I’d already set my ISO to 100. I set a higher f-stop (small aperture size) to go along with my slower shutter speed to avoid blowing out my shot while capturing motion.

I think this next one is pretty neat, with just a hint of the wheels left, almost ghost-like, with the U of A’s Biological Science’s building in the background.
1/10 sec at f/32, ISO 100, Sony a55 w/50mm macro

And one last full car blur.
1/10sec at f/32, ISO 100, Sony a55 w/50mm macro

Ah, May long weekend 🙂 The un-official start of summer and the sign that it’s time to plant the garden outside. Time for gardening, camping, fishing and generally enjoying the outdoors without a million layers 😉

I meant to post this on Friday, at the start of ‘summer’, but summer got in the way. Because, you know, SUMMER!

1/125 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400, Sony a55 w/ 50mm macro

This was my start to summer, after work sangria with awesome coworkers! In a KING jar, no less.